Climate and energy transition policy - Einzelansicht

Climate and energy transition policy, Winter Semester 2020/21

Moodle key: CETP2020/21

Overview and setting of the course

Climate change is one of the big challenges of our time, touching all aspects of the environment and of society. There is broad recognition that governments must do something about it: the implication of the Paris Agreement and its 1.5 and 2 degrees targets is the complete elimination of greenhouse gas emissions from the energy system within the next 30 to 40 years.

This is a very complicated problem. Fundamentally this is because it means doing something that humanity has never really tried before at a planetary scale: deliberately altering the ways we produce, convert, and consume energy. Modern society grew up on fossil fuels, and the huge benefits they offered in terms of energy that was inexpensive, easy and safe to transport, store and consume. How to manage a non-fossil world with 8 or 10 billion people, all aspiring to the Western living standards, is a question for which there is no easy answer.

From a technical perspective, there are many answers, typically relying on a bouquet of solutions, from wind power to nuclear power, from solar heat to passive housing without any heat demand at all. The technical side of decarbonisation is difficult, but possible.

The real nut to crack, however, is about the strategies and governance for how to achieve such a complete transformation: the policy side of climate and energy. Arguably a government could simply pass a law that forbids people from using fossil fuels. But politically this is simply unrealistic, at least while so many people depend on fossil fuels in their daily lives. And even worse, it is not certain that it would work, because the technological alternatives may not be available and implementable overnight. What is to be done? For this, one needs to turn to various ideas about what a government can and should do, whether and how it should influence and steer society. On the one hand are ideas suggesting that government should play a very limited role relative to private actors and should step in only to correct ”market failures”, with ”market-based” interventions designed specifically around that failure. On the other hand are ideas suggesting that government (meaning all of us, working together through a democratic process) needs to guide the transition more directly, including through public investments or radical reforms, designed to support the solutions determined to be the ones we want. And on the third hand, if such a hand exists, are ideas posing that the problem is our own consumption patterns and that these, and economic growth in general, are entirely incompatible with climate protection: only consuming radically less will help. Such fundamental issues come to the fore in climate and energy policy discussions and debates. This course is about all that.

Learning goals

The goal is to give students the ability to evaluate energy and climate policy arguments made by politicians, experts, and academics with a critical eye, informed by knowledge of history, an understanding of the theoretical underpinnings and the empirically observed effects of different strategies. Students successfully finishing the course are able to understand and deconstruct the energy and climate policy debate that is currently raging in Germany, Europe and internationally, and create their own solutions. Thereby, she or he will be able to step into a research institute, an NGO or government agency involved in energy policy, policy analysis or political advocacy, and immediately be able to make an informed and creative contribution.

Course outline

The course will meet once per week, with a reading before each class. Typically this will be 1-2 articles, book chapters or reports on a topic related to the topic of the class, making the reading essential for the class. We will read two entire books, which will form the foundation for the seminar series, and each of the books will be the basis for essays to be written and handed in during the semester.

All material and information will be placed on the course’s Moodle page. Only students registered for the course will have access to the Moodle page and material after the second week.

Each class will take place in a discussion format, often structured around an input from the lecturer (about 45 minutes), including discussion about the important or critical aspects and/or other interactive formats to be carried out in varying breakout groups in class (about 45 minutes).

Due to the persisting Corona situation, the course will take place online in Zoom. It will be challenging to achieve an interactive course climate – exchanging ideas and discussing with each other in the online format. I understand that online courses are very hard for students and the learning often suffers from the limitations that come with Zoom. Rest assured that we suffer together: teaching in Zoom is no fun either, so we must work together to make it work. To this end, you must come well prepared to each class, keep your cameras on – and don’t be afraid to talk or ask, to question me: just step in and ask!

Course requirements and grading

Students are expected to attend all classes, actively participate and prepare by reading all readings, to allow for informed discussions and creative work in class.

All students, regardless of whether they opt for a graded or a pass/fail Schein (Teilnahme), will in addition write and submit two short essays (max. 1000 words), discussing the policy implications of two books (Nordhaus: Climate Casino; Patt: Transforming Energy). These essays will be graded, and a pass grade on both is required for a pass grade for the course. You will receive written feedback on your essays, as a critical step for learning and improving your writing. The essays will be the preparation for two discussion classes (7 and 11) in which we will be critically examining and discussing the hypotheses put forth in these books and the articles we have read for the single classes.

Students who opt for the graded Schein will additionally write a semester thesis (15-20 pages, incl. literature), to be handed in before the end of the semester (31 March 2021). There will be a list of recommended topics to choose from, but students are free to either adapt the suggested questions or to propose questions of their own. If they go for the latter option, a 1-page proposal is required, to ensure consistency with the course and manageability. The semester thesis must be written in English. I will offer a final out-of-schedule seminar about how to write a semester thesis after the last class, likely during the last week of the semester (week of 8 February 2021).

Please inform the lecturer within the required period which option you opt for.

The seminar is designed for max. 25 participants. If the course is oversubscribed, I will prioritise Uni Potsdam students, higher semester students, and students who cannot attend courses in German (in this order). My selection is final and will happen in the week of 9 November.

Course outline and schedule

All seminars will take place in Zoom, each Monday 8.15-9.45. I will send the Zoom link to the first two seminars to all students registered in PULS and post it on the course's Moodle page. Starting with seminar 3, all Zoom links will be only posted on the Moodle page.

Note that the first seminar will NOT happen on the Monday, but on Wednesday 4 November, also at 8.15.

Readings

All required readings will be supplied on Moodle as pdfs so as to be available for all students. The books are available as ebooks at the university library, or in Moodle. If you don’t have access to the Uni Potsdam library, please ask your classmates for help.

Books (in parallel to the Market failure (Nordhaus) and Transition (Patt) seminars, in time for the essays).

Mandatory (as input for the essays):

-          William Nordhaus (2013): The Climate Casino. Risk, uncertainty, and economics of a warming world, Yale University Press, New Haven.

-          Anthony Patt (2015): Transforming Energy. Solving climate change with technology policy, Cambridge University Press, New York.

Recommended (selected chapters are mandatory for classes):

-          John Dryzek (2013): The politics of the Earth, OUP Oxford, Oxford.

Mandatory reading for each class

Will be provided in a separate document on the Moodle page well in advance of each class.